08/29/2013

There have been many generations of this project we call America, all of them with varying degrees of "acceptable" discrimination. Whenever our ongoing American experiment shapes up and learns to repudiate a past form of inequality toward which it showed tacit or expressed approval, there are always some who are left feeling lost. "What happened to 'my' country?" they wonder.

Those who thought our America was one that would forever allow pointed discrimination against LGBT consumers are having this kind of "WTF!?" moment right now. Here's Pennsylvania Family Institute president Michael Geer waking up to his:

I would concede that America circa 2013 does not look like America circa 1963. LGBT rights are just one of the America-bettering realizations that have come into the fore. We have a ways to go, but we have come so far.

As a compassionate human and very proud American citizen, I genuinely do feel bad for people like Geer who feel a sense of hopelessness. I wish I could make them see the holes in their arguments, the good of LGBT equality, and the unwarranted nature of their fears. But I can't. They must come to that realization on their own. Some of our opponents will evolve their understanding; some never will.